


Starline Run

by TheStormeGuard



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
Genre: Clone Commando - Freeform, Grey Force Users, Major Original Character(s), Minor Original Character(s), Multi, Post-Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, Rogue Jedi, Sheev Palpatine - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-11-17
Packaged: 2018-12-15 14:03:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11807454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheStormeGuard/pseuds/TheStormeGuard
Summary: The Clone Wars are drawing to a close. A rogue jedi called Val Ashaia is captured following a failed attempt on Chancellor Palpatine's life. Aboard a Republic Flagship clone trooper and interrogator Sabacc meets with the would-be assassin day after day as she reveals a conspiracy orchestrated by the chancellor that ended with the destruction of her homeworld. Meanwhile, below on the planet of Coruscant, Val Ashaia's former commando unit works to find their missing commander while her new crew struggles to make it off the planet alive. The secrecy of Palpatine's past depends on all of their silence and none of them are safe from his wrath.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first full-length Star Wars fic. My aim was to tell a new story in Lucas's universe that was not necessarily about the Skywalkers or the Rebellion. Rather, Starline Run is about another family who, though they are involved with the jedi, have formed their own force tradition drawing from the Jedi, the Sith and an older force culture that once existed on their homeworld of Maris. 
> 
> Starline Run is an experimental piece for me and may go through several evolutions as I work on it and develop its' world within the world of Star Wars. I'll try to upload chapters in bursts because I switch Point of View characters fairly frequently and I never want anyone to receive an update that includes only the people they're less partial to. With all that out of the way I hope you enjoy the story.
> 
> A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

Republic Flagship: Indominatable  
Above Coruscant   
20 BBY

 

“Commander Nemara, you are hereby expelled from the Grand Army of the Republic and stripped of all rank, tittles and command.”  
“I was still an officer? If I’d known that I might have made a lot more trouble.”  
“Yes, ma’am. Your status was officially missing in action. You were formally expelled from the jedi order but not the military. It’s… well.”  
“There are no deserters, there is silence, Trooper. I’m sure they thought brushing my disappearance under the rug was to their benefit. I doubt even my men were told what happened to me. I hope they were told I was dead.”  
“Ma’am, that’s… that’s harsh.”  
The woman in binders gave a light chuckle. “Yes. It is. I’d hate for them to know what I’ve become. They wouldn’t understand.”  
“No one understands, ma’am.”  
“You will. Before we’re done here… Incidentally, stop calling me ma’am. I’m not your superior, not any longer. Call me Val Ashaia,” the fallen Jedi said. The clone trooper’s opaque helmet just stared. Val Ashaia sighed. “Relax trooper. It’s your job to learn everything about me, right? We’re going to be very familiar with each other before this is through. Might as well cut out the formalities now because I assure you it’ll happen eventually. My story is a long one.”  
“You’re very blasé about all this.”  
“Not the first time I’ve been accused of that. You’re thinking that I’m not taking this very seriously, aren’t you? Well I can assure you I’m not. This is far from the worst bind I’ve been in and I’m fairly confident I’ll get out of it again,” the rogue jedi said with the slightest upturn of her mouth.   
“You’ve been accused of treason. I don’t see how you think you’ll get out of this. The Jedi have no intention of letting you get away.”  
“I’m not just accused, Trooper. I committed treason, and I’d do it again. Though, really whether or not it was treason is an issue of semantics. I’m not a citizen of the republic after all.”  
“I’m confused, ma’am. Can you clarify your statement?”  
“Val Ashaia,” the woman corrected, “I’ve been a prisoner of war most of my life, you see. Yet you’ve probably never heard of Shii Ashaia or the queendom of Maris, have you?”  
“No… I can’t say that I have.”  
“Few can. They buried it, and what happened there, deep. The Jedi stole me and raised me. I was never meant to become a knight. Their own secrets failed them there, though. I… am getting ahead of myself. What’s your name, trooper?”  
“CT Forty nine sixty three, ma’am,” The trooper replied.  
“But may I know your name?”  
This time there was a long hesitation. Finally he answered, “They call me Sabacc. Or they did before I was transferred to interrogation.”  
“Thank you, Sabaak. You can remove your helmet if you like. I won’t try to harm you and I’m sure you know it’ll be easier for me to trust you if I have a familiar face to speak to.”  
Again there was an unsure pause and then the trooper slowly reached up and removed his helmet. Sabacc had a standard military buzz cut and no visible tattoos but a starburst shaped scar beneath his left eye would distinguish him from other clones.  
Val Ashaia smiled at him. The clone looked uncomfortable. She stopped. Still, she found she couldn’t resist the urge to comment.  
“Cheat the wrong sentient at cards, trooper?” Val Ashaia asked with poorly subdued amusement playing in her tone.  
“What?” Sabaak asked, startled.  
“Your scar. Looks like someone got you with a blaster pistol.”  
“Oh,” Sabaak said, coloring slightly. “No, this came from a freedom fighter on Renvar Six. Didn’t take kindly to having to share provisions with my unit. Got me before I ever saw it coming. I was lucky. Could’ve taken my eye.” There was a long silence.  
“Something else you want to say?” Val Ashaia asked.  
The trooper looked away, clearly thought better of it. Val Ashaia waited. Sooner or later he’d talk to her. It didn’t have to be sooner.   
“I don’t cheat. At cards. At Sabacc. That’s not how I got my name,” The clone said in a rushed tumble of words.  
“No?” Val Ashaia prodded.  
“I shouldn’t be telling you this,” Sabaak mumbled, setting his helmet down on the durasteel table.  
“You’re building camaraderie. It’s justifiable.”  
“I’m not going to like you, ma’am. You can stop trying to charm me,” Sabaak bit out.  
“I’m not trying anything. Just making conversation. Days are long and boring in a brig,” the ex-jedi shrugged at him as best she could while suspended in a containment field. “So if it’s not because you cheat at Sabacc is it because you’re good at it?” Val Ashaia asked.  
“Yeah…” The clone said. He looked at Val Ashaia, sighed. “Yeah, I’m good at Sabacc. Don’t lose often. People like me. Don’t think I’m bluffing. I was raking in the credits before I got transferred.”  
“Ah. People trust you. That’s why you’re here now.”  
“More or less.”  
“Just like the republic to reward your service by taking you away from your unit and sticking you in a dead end post. Do you miss them? Your brothers?”  
“I told you to stop that,” Sabacc said, narrowing his eyes.  
Val Ashaia surrendered. She’d pushed hard enough for today. Sabacc was vulnerable and it was enough progress to know that. He was surely good at his job but that was because he liked people, liked to talk to them and Val Ashaia was sure people liked talking to him too. That meant Sabacc could be influenced. It was obvious in the way he was trying to intimidate the rogue jedi away from personal questions that he was worried about building a two way relationship with her.   
“Very well. I’ll stop. What do you want to know?”  
“Why’d you try to kill the Chancellor?” Sabacc asked evenly.  
Val Ashaia snorted. “Have you ever watched the man talk? He’s clearly full to his oily gills with pure poodoo. Anyone in their right minds would want him to shut up.”  
“So you tried to assassinate Chancellor Palpatine because of a personal dislike?” Sabacc said incredulously.  
“A mild way to put it. That slimy son of a dianoga is a backstabbing, vicious and diabolical political climber. He’ll do anything to get power, and I assume he’d do worse to hold onto it. He more than deserves to die, he needs to. You should worry too. About what he’ll do after the war. After the republic realizes he’s installed himself as permanent ruler. He won’t go quietly.” Val Ashaia worked for calm but hatred bubbled inside her, black and poisonous.  
“Why do you think that?” Sabak asked evenly.   
‘He thinks I’m crazy.’ Val Ashaia realized suddenly. Well. That’s wasn’t too surprising considering the clones had been bred to serve the jedi. Most of them probably believed them infallible, or at least close to omnipotent. For someone like Val Ashaia to exist, someone who’d willingly turned her back so completely on the tenants of the order to be so matter of fact about it? And assassination? Probably beggared his belief.  
“Ma’am?”   
The ex-jedi ignored him. She was too busy being surprised at her own creeping dismay at the possibility that she was considered unstable. That perhaps she was. Maybe Val Ashaia was connecting dots that didn’t belong together. Maybe she had been rash. Maybe… but it was far too late for doubt now.  
“Val. Ashaia.” Sabacc said sharply. The ex-jedi jerked in the containment field as she returned to the moment. “I asked you why you think that?”  
Val Ashaia searched his face. “It’s a long story. I want you to hear it all before you make any decisions about me. I’m sure the jedi and the senate have told you why they think this happened. I’m sure you have your own ideas. Will you promise to hear me, Sabacc? If I tell you I want you to listen.”  
“That’s my job, ma’am. To listen. If you’re really willing to talk then that’s what I’ll do.”  
“Do you swear it?”  
“I swear, Val Ashaia Nemara. I will listen.”   
The clone stood straight, with perfect posture and composure. He was hard to read, as most clones were in Val Ashaia’s experience, but the steadiness of his gaze was reassuring. It shouldn’t matter whether or not he believed her. All the rogue jedi needed was for him to let his guard down long enough for her to escape. But she found herself with a strange feeling. She wanted him to believe her. She was afraid she wanted him to like her.  
The loneliness of the last year was eating at her focus. It was hard to be alone. There had been little love in her life as a jedi but there had always been companionship. Her master had cared for her. He didn’t know who she was and maybe if he had that would have soured his affection. But he didn’t and now he never would. And later, the unit, her men….. She missed them.   
Centering herself, calling on her training to wash the feelings away as if they were merely dirt on her hands, Val Ashaia regained her composure.  
“I’m relieved to hear it. This will be a long story. You might want to take a seat,” she said, nodded at the bare durasteel chair beside the table. Only one. Val Ashaia would be hovering in her containment field for the duration of this conversation.   
“I’ll stand.”  
“Suit yourself,” Val Ashaia said. She began to shrug but the tightness in her shoulders stopped her. The binders had locked her wrists together for days. It was too soon to ask Sabacc to remove them but she hoped to wear him down that. The ache was terrible.   
The ex-jedi continued, “Maris is the key to understanding all of this. It’s probably been renamed since I knew it. But it is, or at least was, a territory of Naboo. I don’t think there would be too many of those to determine which planet Maris was.”  
“Why does that matter?”  
“Because someone who hears this might be interested in finding out. I assume this is being recorded?”  
Sabacc didn’t answer Val Ashaia. He didn’t need to. The question was essentially rhetorical.   
“I tried to find out,” Val Ashaia continued, “but there was little could find on the holonet and I didn’t have a chance to access the jedi’s archives before I left the republic. I was barely four standard years old when I was taken so what memories I have left are… limited. And probably inaccurate. But the broad strokes are there. I could never forget.”  
“All jedi are taken from their homes as children. Is this really necessary?”  
“Yes. It is.”   
“Then tell me.”


	2. Chapter 2

The Queendom of Maris, Ashaid Palace  
15 Years Ago

It was so colorful. Water had burst from the walls and rushed over the smooth, stone floors like a river. It covered her legs and her hands, braced just wider than her shoulders. They felt bruised and a sharp pain ran up both her wrists.   
Yet the water was cool and it felt good. And all through it ran colors, dim in the dirty flow of it, bright in the spray and errant droplets that flew into the air where small waves and waterfalls crashed. There was blue and red streaking so fast that it was almost constant, and slow blooming golden clouds. Through it all was a steady magenta glow that tinted the foam and the pale of Val Ashaia’s skin.  
The roaring was so loud as to be silence. She wanted it to stop and for the world to stop spinning. It was all too much. She didn’t understand. Val Ashaia felt warm all over and a hard, cool tightness in her chest. Suddenly her muscles contracted and she was vomiting all over her hands.   
Everything suddenly came into focus. Ships screamed overhead, there were booming explosions and the short, sharp sound of blaster fire was a constant barrage. Val Ashaia’s head didn’t hurt. It was more than that, a bigger, more powerful word than hurt. Her stomach clenched again and she emptied the rest of the contents of her stomach into the flood. She heaved over and over again in massive body shaking sobs, unable to breathe, tears streamed down her face. The heaves were growing stronger even though she had nothing left in her body.   
Val Ashaia registered the, sudden biting pressure on her shoulders just as she was hauled upright. Val Ashaia almost didn’t recognize the woman who held her.  
There was broken hole in the headdress Mother wore, twisted metal and wild hair replacing the filigreed gold and bronze pearls that usually decorated her forehead. The woman’s face was burned and smeared with black marks. One hand griped Val Ashaia’s shoulder, fingers curled in like claws. The other traveled up Val Ashaia’s neck, head, limbs in rapid, rough succession.   
Val Ashaia couldn’t take her eyes from her mother’s. She’d never seen the narrow silver orbs like that before, stretched wide and wild with emotion. It looked almost like she was afraid. That was impossible. Mother was never afraid.  
Val Ashaia was shaking again. Her mother’s lips were moving rapidly but Val Ashaia couldn’t hear anything over the roaring. It was so loud. The ringing. The explosions.   
Suddenly, the hand that had been checking her body for wounds flew into the air. The little girl screamed and twisted away reflexively but her mother still had her other hand dug into her shoulder to hold her still. The slap landed with sharp, wet finality on Val Ashaia’s tear and snot covered cheek. Now her mother took both of the girl’s shoulders and held her directly at eye level. Her lips were forming words again.  
“-ather. Val Ashaia listen to me. Where is papa? Where is your father?” Suddenly Mother was screaming, her voice raw and shrill.   
Papa. Val Ashaia remembered. Right before all of this. She’d been watching the firefight from the window. He’d called for her in the tone he used when she was in trouble. He’d sounded angry. She didn’t know what she’d done. She remembered turning. And then a blur.  
The little girl struggled against her mother’s hands, looking frantically toward where she’d last seen her father. By the door from the inner household. There was nothing there now. The door was gone. The stone arch that once supported it had crumbled.  
“No,” Mother breathed. Her hands suddenly fell loose. “Stay here, Val Ashaia. Stay.”   
Mother stumbled to her feet and then ran to the collapsed door. She extended her hands and focused on the rubble. The massive, old stones began shifting slowly from their places. Mother stood completely still, only the slight trembling of her fingers giving away the incredible strain of controlling the force and her emotions whilst moving the masonry. It was painfully slow work. Val Ashaia could see thin veins standing out sharply against the golden skin of the back of Mother’s hands.   
“Mother, we’re coming!” Piped a boy’s voice from behind Val Ashaia. She turned to see her brother, Tayvin, pelt through the door at a full sprint, dirty and ragged. After him came her eldest sibling, Forith, white lightsaber drawn as he turned his back on the room and whirled to face the door they’d just come through.   
Mother snapped her head towards them. “No!” She snarled. Suddenly the rocks she’d so laboriously lifted dropped several centimeters. She turned back to them, face contorted in a grimace of effort.   
“Tayvin stay with your sister,” their mother said sharply.  
“But!” Tayvin protested.  
“Now, Tayvin.” Mother hadn’t raised her voice. But she’d used the voice as she so rarely did. The one they couldn’t disobey. Tayvin scrambled toward Val Ashaia. “Forith, are they following you?” Mother continued. She still sounded strained but now the charged aura of command that had briefly filled her was gone, replaced with exhaustion.   
“No, I don’t think so.” Forith barked. He released the switch on his lightsaber and the blade receded into its hilt.  
“Then come help me. Quickly.”   
Tayvin scrambled up next to Val Ashaia and pulled her into his arms. He smelled like burning. It was awful. She tried to squirm away but the moment she used her hands to push pain streaked through her, turning the world white.   
Tayvin grabbed her wrists and tried to hold her but it hurt too much. When she screamed he released her as though she’d burned him. He patted her hair, her shoulder urgently as though trying to find somewhere safe to touch her. When she didn’t scream again he pulled her jerkily to his heaving, narrow chest.   
“It’s okay, Vala, it’s okay. I think they’re just broken, you’ll be okay. Your hands will be okay. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He babbled and Val Ashaia felt tears warming her hair. She was crying too. She didn’t know why. With her hands cradled between them it didn’t hurt so bad. Out of the corner of her eye she saw he mother and brother standing shoulder to shoulder. They spoke but Val Ashaia couldn’t hear them.  
After a time, maybe only seconds, their mother’s scream pierced the distant firefight and closer sobs. It was almost animalistic, triumph fading into pain. Val Ashaia burrowed her head around until she could see the scattered rubble pile where Mother was using both her hands to heave Papa out while Forith used the force to fling the masonry pining his legs away. Papa wasn’t moving.   
“Papa?” Tayvin whispered, his grip slackening on his younger sister. Val Ashaia shot from his hands and ran as fast as her short, unsteady legs could carry her. She slowed as Tayvin caught up with her.  
There was a pale cast to their father’s usually bright orange skin, and blood was smeared across his clothes and the stones he’d been pulled from. His head lay on his wife’s lap as she rested her forehead on his.   
“Mother?” Forith said hesitantly. He walked toward her and crouched beside the still form of his father.  
Their mother raised her head with a weak smile. “He’s alive, don’t worry.” She lingered a while, his face cradled in her hands before reaching toward her son. “Do you have a canteen?” She asked.  
He shook his head but called for his younger brother. Tayvin did, and he quickly crossed the few steps to his parents, passing the canteen from his belt to his mother. Val Ashaia trailed behind him.   
Their mother pulled off her outer robe and ripped the lining free. She wetted it from the canteen and started wiping the grit from her husband’s face. At the touch of the cold water he groaned and rolled onto his side. After a moment, his eyes flickered open.  
“Shii?” He asked. His voice was gravelly and hoarse, but no more so than usual. A single sigh of relief escaped the children’s mother before her features became the cool mask Val Ashaia associated with the Queen part of her mother’s personality. She’d never been so happy to see her mother turn cold and aloof.   
“I’m here, Valith. Can you move?”   
Val Ashaia’s father moved all of his limbs carefully. He gritted his teeth but uttered no sound of protest.  
“Yes, I can.” He said finally. With a hand from his wife Valith managed to climb to his feet. Wordlessly Shii pressed the canteen to him. He drank quickly and deeply. When he was done he tossed it aside.  
He looked at Shii for a long moment. Val Ashaia knew they were communicating. A look of grief came over Valith’s face.  
“Yes,” Shii Ashaia, Queen of Maris, replied oddly formally, “all is lost. There is no chance for us now.” She closed her eyes for a long moment and was perfectly still. When they opened again they were blazing a pure silvery blue. “There is almost no time left. Take the babies and go. I think the personal hangar is still intact. You must hurry,” she said.  
Valith grabbed his wife’s forearm suddenly, tightly. Val Ashaia could see her mother’s skin puckering around his grip.  
“Forith too,” Valith growled. Shii Ashaia stared at him, face frozen. Forith stepped forward, slipping in the rolling gravel.  
“Father, let her go,” he said. He sounded… calm. More adult than Val Ashaia had ever heard him. “I’m her apprentice. My place is by her side.”  
Valith released his wife and looked at his son. Gradually grief overcame his features.   
“I need him,” Shii Ashaia said. She opened her mouth but seemed incapable of saying more. She looked away, toward the floor.   
“He’s your son,” Valith spat. Shii Ashaia didn’t move, didn’t even flinch. It was Forith who came forward, touched his father’s shoulder lightly. They were almost the same height.   
“I’ve decided, papa.”  
“But you’ll….”  
“I know. I swore an oath. I…” Forith’s voice broke and he swallowed hard. What little color Valith had regained drained from him again. The two embraced tightly.   
Valith clutched his oldest son to him as he sought his wife’s gaze. It was not forthcoming. “Shii…. Isn’t there any way?”  
She shook her head sharply and several ornaments flung loose, falling to the floor with metallic tinks inaudible over the roar of combat outside. Dimly, Val Ashaia noticed that there were less red blaster bolts in the sky above and the explosions were coming less frequently. Shii Ashaia’s dark hair tumbled to hang half up, half down, braids and loose hairs straggling across her shoulders and back. She’d never looked so unkempt in Val Ashaia’s memory. The queen cocked her head toward the sky, a calculating look in her eyes.  
“That’s it then. They’ll be beginning the ground assault. This is your last chance to go.” Shii breathed deeply and met the accusing glare of her husband. “All my men have been asked to die for me today. Beings who never swore their service to me. People with families who desperately needed my money to feed their children. If they have to fall here for nothing more than credits and I spare my own blood for selfishness what does that make me?”  
“There is no chance left, you said it yourself. Come with us Shii. Don’t die for honor. You can still save your children.”  
A fine shudder ran through Shii Ashaia’s shoulders. At last she met her husband’s eyes. “No,” She said simply.  
Valith slammed a fist down on the cracked masonry beside him. The block shattered.   
“I don’t understand. I don’t understand why it has to be like this. I don’t understand you. Why send me away and not Forith? Have him take the children. He can pilot.”  
“Not well enough for this. It has to be you. You never swore an oath to die beside me in battle. Forith… did.”  
“I swore an oath on the day I married you. To never leave you. To never leave our children. What you’re asking me to do…”  
“No. I’m not asking. I’m ordering. Before anything else you are their father. Your only duty now is to protect them. Before I am their mother I am their queen. My duty is to protect my people. All of them. Equally. Now go, Valith. Please.”   
Valith looked stricken. He released Forith and cupped the back of his wife’s head in trembling hands. He kissed her. Then he pressed his forehead to hers.  
“I have always loved you,” he said softly.  
Shii Ashaia shuddered again. Her eyelashes seemed to glitter wetly for just a moment.   
“Thank you,” She said just as softly. Then they broke apart.   
There were explosions. Closer now. The ground shuddered and Val Ashaia stumbled with a small cry. Tayvin caught her forearm.  
“They’re coming,” Forith whispered urgently.  
“I know,” his mother replied, “I sense them. Valith...” Mother’s voice choked. She looked at him helplessly.   
Forith scrabbled down to the floor and knelt before his siblings. He gathered them into his arms tightly.  
“Tay, Vala, I love you. And I’ll miss you so much.” He gave them a powerful squeeze and backed away.   
Valith stumbled down the small pile after his son, one of his legs moving stiffly. Forith met his gaze evenly.   
“May the force be with you both,” Valith choked out. Forith nodded.   
“And with you,” Shii Ashaia said from atop her perch, built on the crumbled remains of her home, “I love you all. Now go. And don’t look back.”  
With that Valith scooped Val Ashaia into his arms and, with one last look at his wife and eldest son, started toward the center of the palace, away from the approaching sounds of small blaster fire.   
“Can you run?” Valith asked Tayvin, towing him along by the hand. The child nodded. Without another word Valith started running, his gait slightly uneven but paced to the shorter legs of his middle child.  
“Papa..?” Tayvin asked tremulously. He packed an infinity of fear and confusion into that one word.  
Valith just shook his head. “Keep up with me, Tayvin. Don’t look back.”  
Val Ashaia watched over Valith’s shoulder as her mother and her brother turned away from the opening. As they receded into the frame of the narrow hallway. As shouting and screams began to be heard over the ambient sound of combat. One after another her mother’s and brother’s lightsabers came to light. She stared at the bright glow until Valith turned a corner.


	3. Chapter 3

Republic Flagship: Indominatable   
Above Coruscant

“Val Ashaia? Can you hear me?” Sabacc was less than a meter away, his hand stretched out as if to touch her. He couldn’t, of course. Even discounting the containment field there was still a transparisteel sheet between them.  
Val Ashaia blinked rapidly, feeling the sticky weight of tears on her lashes. She hadn’t realized that had happened. The invasion had happened so long ago. She tried not to think about it. This was why. The pain was still so unfathomably overwhelming.   
A deep crease had formed between Sabacc’s brow, and a small frown marred his features, pullinh his scar tightly so that the knitted skin appeared translucent.   
“Careful,” Val Ashaia said thickly. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Careful, trooper. Someone might think you were concerned.”   
Sabacc dropped his hand and stepped back sharply. After a moment he quirked a small smile.  
“Careful, ma’am. Someone might think you’re making a weak attempt to distract me with petty jabs.”   
Val Ashaia stifled a chuckle despite herself. She knew the Kaminoans hadn’t programmed the clones to be amicable but she’d mostly enjoyed their companionship and sense of humor. Strange, that. They were bred to be career soldiers. They probably shouldn’t have found much of anything funny. And yet.   
“Well, you’ve got me there, Sabacc. But a genuine warning: you’re too sincere. You’d be a soft target for someone who wanted to manipulate you. They should have trained you for this.”  
“They did, ma’am.” Something in his tone, the meaningfulness of his glance, set alarm klaxons off inside of the ex-jedi.  
“Oh? Am I being manipulated? You feign concern to endear yourself to me?” The ex-jedi tone was sharp, harsh. Val Ashaia immediately regretted it. Too late to do anything about it, of course.  
The only sound in the small room was Val Ashaia’s heavy breathing. Sabacc just stared at her. His eyes were as flat and unreadable as his helmet had been. His wrist unit beeped earnestly.  
“You’re upset and you’re lashing out. We need to break for today anyway. Someone else will be along to take you to your cell shortly.”   
With that Sabacc picked up and replaced his helmet and walked from the room.  
“Kriff!” Val Ashaia exclaimed. It came out slightly garbled. Her throat still felt swollen and raw from emotion. Her shoulders burned. How long had she been speaking? The whole encounter had been a disaster.   
Her goal had been to earn sympathy, maybe even some pity if that was what it took to get him to, if not like her, then want to help the poor, lost and broken jedi traitor. She’d gotten caught up in her story. He hadn’t needed so many details or such a vivid retelling from her, but once she’d broken the seal of her memories she’d needed him to know. Needed him to understand. Perhaps they’d been right to send the naïve seeming clone to interrogate her. It was working for them so far. He had the same face as the men she’d served beside, cared for and trusted with her life. It was disarming.  
Val Ashaia tilted her head back and began meditation breathing. There was nothing she could do about her mistake now but try to learn from it. In the future she needed to maintain control. Remain aware.  
The fallen jedi closed her eyes and counted the seconds before breathing in, and then out. The physical slipped away. Outside she felt beings moving about their duties, droids and clones exclusively, on this level. She was in the core of the ship and isolated from any civilians that could possibly be there. Distantly, she could feel the presence of a jedi master. She’d been on the ship three days and there was always at least one aboard.  
The Indomitable was a mobile command station and it was unusual for it to be orbiting Coruscant for so long though she supposed they’d concocted an excuse. She was being held and guarded but there didn’t seem to be a rush to justice or to uncover her reasons. Which was interesting. Few knew about her attempt on the Chancellor’s life, which clearly was helping to delay the process, but there must also have been something else going on. Something sapping the Jedi’s attention and availability but not requiring the Indomitable’s presence.   
There was no way to know. So far her only interaction of any substance with an organic aboard the ship had been with Sabacc. A droid might have been an easier target but thus far it seemed that all the droids assigned near her did not possess vocal capabilities or at least would not speak to her.   
A familiar presence approached the door to the interrogation room. The jailer. A clone like all the other staff on the brig level but distinct in that he was always humming a tune under his breath. He probably didn’t even know he did it. Yet it was a tell, and one that let Val Ashaia measure the passage of time by his shifts despite spending her days in a chrono-less cell. That was important in case they began to try in earnest to break her. There was nothing to find that she wouldn’t freely tell them, unfortunately. The experience would be dissatisfying for everyone involved.  
The door seal broke and Val Ashaia felt herself rise a few additional centimeters into the air. They’d loaded the containment field onto a palette droid for the ride back to her cell. The ex-jedi opened her eyes, careful to remain otherwise motionless, and observed carefully. The brig seemed mostly deserted. They passed only one guard on patrol, and there were no indications of other prisoners. Even droids were minimal. Only one maintenance model worked in a hatch down one side passage.   
They soon arrived at a cell large enough the easily allow the palette droid to maneuver. It was, Val Ashaia supposed, designed for this purpose. To contain force users indefinitely with minimal effort.   
The door slammed shut and multiple metal bolts slid into slots all around the door to lock it firmly in place. Seconds later the suspension field disengaged and Val Ashaia tumbled to the floor in an ungraceful and stiff sprawl. Fortunately, perhaps for the first time in her life, there was no one there watching to see if she fell. That empty silence occupying the cell with her was a strange and lonely freedom.


	4. Chapter 4

Meanwhile, on Coruscant,  
There was something about Coruscant that was unlike any other world. Even in broad daylight the city still seemed to stubbornly exist only in greyscale. Black and silver spires tore through the skyline, draped in glistening webs of causeways. All around white light flashed off of transparisteel panes and the constantly droning speeders on all sides. It was a metropolis that stood in spite of sentient beings and not because of them. It seemed so impassive. Every time Backdraft visited he liked the place less and less.  
This time least of all. His team was in pieces and they expected him to just go on leave? No. He wouldn’t even leave the platform until he saw the rest of his men. Stripes and Trigger Finger stood behind him, one to each shoulder, waiting just as anxiously and standing just as at attention. Stripes was still, only the creak of his armor betrayed his breathing, and Trigger shifted unobtrusively foot to foot as his anxiety got the better of him. They all felt it. What was taking so long?  
All five of them had come in on the same cruiser. The tattered remains of Lightning Squad hanging on by their fingertips through one last mission together. This was it for them. They could argue their way to remaining a unit at five men, but less than that? No kriffing way. Once the medical transport landed they were done. Even if Kaff and Shifts made it they’d never be fit for the front line again.   
Backdraft felt his fists tighten, the worn gloves creaking. From behind his right shoulder there was a slight noise and then a light hand settled on Backdraft’s shoulder. Stripes. He always knew. Thank whatever gods were out there he’d made it.   
Backdraft inclined his head slightly. Stripes patted his shoulder again and then stepped away. Backdraft unclenched his fists.  
There was a burst of static and com chatter from the control booth and suddenly the running lights on the platform lit up. The medlift was finally coming in. It descended ponderously through the haze above the city, search lights panning until they settled on the open pad. Meanwhile a smaller speeder with medical transport logos on the side glided down near them.  
With precision timing the medlift touched down with its ramp lowered just as the speeder backed to it and threw the doors open. The clone troopers watched with rapt, tense focus as one after another Kaff and Shifts were brought down the ramp in suspensor pods and loaded. When it was Shifts’s turn Backdraft immediately put up his arm to block Trigger. As predictably as one drill maneuver followed after another Trigger’s chest thumped into the restraining arm as the trooper surged forward to get to his teammate.  
When they’d left him in the medbay Shifts had been in pain and incoherent but conscious. Since that time he’d been intubated and lay as still as the dead and the dying. It hadn’t been more than thirty minutes. There was nothing they could do.  
The speeder’s doors closed on the last sight of Shifts’s suspensor pod. The tattered remains of Lightning Squad stood, a pitiful number of clones, their too close for parade standard huddle belaying the exacting precision of their upright postures.   
“All right,” Backdraft said as the taillights of the medical transport sailed toward the military hospital, “Move out.” The clone trooper spared a brief thought of disgust at the steadiness in his voice. He could offer his solidarity but for some reason the emotion he felt he should feel, that should’ve clogged his throat, wasn’t there. He didn’t know whether to blame himself, the war or his conditioning for the cloying numbness. Maybe there was no one and nothing to blame.  
He followed his men into the turbolift and wearily removed his helmet from his aching neck. With a rusty sounding creak the lift began the long trip towards the surface and Lightning’s Squad’s officially proscribed and, quote, well deserved R&R. These were their last days as Lightning Squad Commandos and it seemed wholly surreal they should spend them in the thronging skyways and decaying understructure of Coruscant.


	5. Chapter 5

The Indomitable  
The door stood firmly shut before Sabacc. He had his helmet under one arm and he hesitated. He keyed a code into the door. His helmet stayed where it was.  
Val Ashaia Nemara hung in the same position she had eighteen hours ago, though at his request she’d been brought a change of clothes and some basic grooming products. The exiled jedi looked different now. At once much less dangerous, out of her tattered and bloodied infiltrator’s suit, and more self-possessed with a clean face and her colorless hair tightly re-braided down the back of her head. The plait split at the nape of her neck and fell in two braids, one over each shoulder. She looked like the holo Sabacc had been given of her now. Like a jedi.  
“Hello ma’am. Did you sleep well?” Sabacc asked as he set his helmet on the table.  
“Yes, I did. I presume I have you to thank for the improved hospitality?” Val Ashaia asked, her face held in a carefully schooled neutral pose. She gave away no hint of her feelings on the matter… though it was often hard to tell if Jedi even had feelings on the matter. Sabacc had studied for his position, he had memorized the jedi code and practiced a fair bit of their technique. What he’d learned was that he probably could never understand them but his job remained to come close as possible.  
“Yes, ma’am. I apologize that all we had on board were Clone Trooper fatigues,” Sabacc said. Though, as it happened, they didn’t fit her terribly badly. She wasn’t much shorter than the clone soldiers, and although she lacked the same raw muscle mass her shoulders were nearly broad enough to fill out the loose-fitting shirt. Her arms, what he could see of them because they were bound behind her back whenever she was removed from her cell, were solid and toned.   
“Oh I doubt that. But I’m grateful all the same. Thank you.”  
That rankled for some reason. Something in her tone implied it was a personal favor. It wasn’t, of course. It was a commitment to basic moral dignity for the prisoner in his unit’s charge at best and a tactic to ingratiate her to him at worst.  
“No need for thanks, ma’am,” Sabacc replied.  
Val Ashaia quirked an eyebrow. “Again with the ma’am-ing, huh?” She said laconically.   
“Yes, ma’am,” Sabacc said. Jedi played mind games. With and without the force. Sabacc knew she was trying to manipulate him even as he manipulated her. The story she’d told the previous night, though vivid, had no evidence to support it. At least on the general access holo-net.   
The rogue jedi huffed out an amused breath. “Well, at least you took your helmet off this time. That’s progress.”  
“If you say so ma’am.”  
The two stared one another down. Sabacc considered sitting in the chair. Decided against it. He was tired. It was early. He’d barely slept. Showing any sign of weakness to Val Ashaia was a mistake. Sabacc stood.   
“Yesterday, you told me a story. How is it relevant to your current situation?” Sabacc asked.  
“It’s relevant.”  
“How?”  
“You swore you’d listen to the whole story. All of it. I’m not done telling it.”  
“My superiors, your former superiors, are not patient.”  
“I’m quite familiar with what the punishment for treason is. As I am no longer recognized as a jedi my crimes will be tried under martial law. Then they’ll execute me. I’m happy to drag out this experience. I have nothing to lose,” Val Ashaia’s bloodless lips stretched into a humorless grin, “They have a Supreme Chancellor to lose. The only way I’ll give your superiors what they want is on my terms.”   
Val Ashaia watched him, that smile plastered on her lips. The longer it hung there the more false it seemed. There was something in her eyes again, those silvery blue irises that carried the only color on her face, something that had been there the previous day. Sabacc decided to press on the issue. See if anything fell out.  
“We have ways of making you talk,” was Sabacc’s riposte.  
The strained smile the exile wore contorted further, into an expression locked somewhere between a grimace and mirth.  
“You’ll find me extremely resilient,” Val Ashaia replied.  
“We have the best interrogators in the Grand Army at our disposal.”  
“And they sent you? You must be good because it really seems to me like you’re not getting anywhere.”  
The clone let the jab wash over him.  
“We’ll see, ma’am.”  
“Yeah, we will. Your training or mine. Let’s see which is better?” Val Ashaia said. There was enthusiasm in her voice now.   
“Competitive?” Sabacc asked. He had her records. He knew she was. The jedi had revealed precious little about her training but what they had had been very illuminating.   
“Oh yes,” The jedi said with relish.  
“You’ve already lost.” Sabaac said flatly. Cutting her off like that, a flat denial of the contest she clearly thought she’d enjoy, might do the trick. After analyzing their brief session the day before Sabacc had concluded Val Ashaia was prone to emotional reactions. Particularly when Sabacc indicated a situation was out of her control. That assessment was supported by her records and the holo of her final field exam with the commando unit assigned to her. The test was a typical no-win scenario run with live ammunition and explosives. There had been several wounded and they had not achieved their assigned goal. However, the unit’s mission performance was graded as acceptable. Val Ashaia’s reaction to the test was outsized and emotional. She viewed the scenario as a personal failure and the following critique as censure. The instructor’s notes, written by one jedi master Shaak Ti, had indicated unsurity as to the candidate’s suitability for the pilot program. Nevertheless, the assignment had been ultimately confirmed.   
The clone continued, “Even if you don’t speak of your own volition the order will eventually send a Jedi.”  
Val Ashaia didn’t immediately react, but she’d hidden her emotions behind a mask of impassivity again. That, in itself, was a reaction.  
“They will. Eventually. But it’ll be a last resort. And a final one. We have time,” the ex-jedi said evenly and frankly. No games with this statement. It had the cold ring of truth. Sabacc made a mental note, and with a casual tap of his thumb on his wrist unit a tag in the recording, to ask his liaison from the order about that later.  
Once again the pair stood, or floated, in silence. Sabacc saw the involuntary tremors in Val Ashaia’s shoulders. She’d been in binders on and off for days. That was hard on most human and human-like species’ musculature. She’d be in considerable pain. Sabacc hated his job. He didn’t like deliberately choosing to inflict suffering on someone for the simple purpose of using it as leverage. It was a small torture, but one none the less.   
“It seems,” the clone said at length, “we’re at an impasse.”  
“Not at all,” Val Ashaia replied, “I’m happy to talk on our previously agreed to terms.”  
Sabacc had figured this would be her answer. Perhaps it had been a mistake agreeing to hear what apparently was going to be the prisoner’s entire life story. Sabacc’s commanding officer certainly thought so though the Jedi liason, Master Plo Koon, had remained curiously silent on the matter.   
“Why is this necessary?” Sabacc asked. When Val Ashaia didn’t answer he continued, “I intend to keep my promise. I just need a reason to take upstairs. A explanation will delay unnecessary ugliness.”  
Val Ashaia’s eyes roamed his face with a searching kind of focus. Sabacc wondered what exactly she was looking for there. Most likely the ghost of her squad. Men she’d trusted with her life for years. By all accounts they’d been extremely effective together and had been on many missions. In Sabacc’s experience that meant they’d have been close. Many clones were extremely attached to the Jedi they fought beside. It stood to reason that the feeling could be mutual. It was why, after all, it was decided a clone interrogator would be the best option. Sabacc thought if their positions were reversed he’d be doing the same. He missed his first unit, the ones who’d given him the name that now got used in this interrogation room and nowhere else, every single day.   
“Alright,” Val Ashaia said slowly, “I want several things, in descending order, by means of this conversation. The first of which is justice. Wholly unlikely but technically possible. Barring that I want my reasoning, and a warning, to be heard and understood. Failing that, which frankly, I’m sure it will fail, I want it on official record, in redacted holos and transcribed onto flimsy locked in the deepest, most forgotten vault of Grand Republic Army command that I told you all so. I told you that Sheev Palpatine is a snake, a liar and a war profiteer. He is responsible for genocide. But I can’t prove it. Which is why I know no one will listen to me. It’s my word against his. That’s why I’m doing this. How I got so close to Palpatine, who I worked with… They’re hostage to my need to tell you, and all of your superiors who will hear this recording, what happened to Maris and how Sheev did it.”  
“That’s an extreme and unlikely accusation,” Sabacc said. Frankly he was impressed he’d said anything. His mind was still trying to work through the small manifesto Val Ashaia had presented so suddenly after so much recalcitrance.  
That pained smile again. Val Ashaia’s face never seemed to convey emotion in quite the way she seemed to want it to.  
“And you thought I should be concerned by an accusation of treason,” her voice conveyed a wryness that her eyes didn’t match. There it was again. The same look from earlier and the previous day. Desperation. Sabacc finally put a finger on it. He wasn’t gladdened by the revelation.   
The clone trooper wasn’t able to string together a reply that felt appropriate. He merely inclined his head.  
“I’d like to resume my story now, Sabacc. May I?”  
The clone nodded.  
The rogue jedi didn’t speak though, instead her eyes slid to the chair. Sabacc felt a familiar conversation welling.  
“You know,” Val Ashaia said, mock-conversationally, “you really don’t have to stand. The only thing making you do that is yourself.”  
She was right. Sabaac considered standing merely on principle’s sake. Ultimately he gave up and sat down. It was a trade off between cold military formality, which by this point was quite sacrificed internally even if Val Ashaia hadn’t sensed it yet, and the unequal power balance in Sabacc’s favor if he were in a position to sit calmly whilst the prisoner was forced to stand in an uncomfortable position.   
Val Ashaia arched an eyebrow. “Sitting comfortably?” She asked, voice dripping with mockery.  
“Yes,” Sabaac replied.   
The mood in the room suddenly sobered considerably from its already low point. “Well then,” Val Ashaia said, dragging every word wearily out as though avoiding the next as long as possible, “Where do I start?”


	6. Chapter 6

The Queendom of Maris, Ashaid Palace  
15 Galactic Standard Years Ago

Val Ashaia didn’t remember much of the minutes or hours that followed her family’s flight from the palace. Just blurs. She knew her family’s shuttle had been shot down mere moments after takeoff.   
Tayvin had struggled to buckle Val Ashaia into the jump seat as their father slapped at controls. There was a lurch as the repulsors fired and the shuttle began to lift. Tayvin threw himself into his own seat. Suddenly their father turned around in his seat, his mouth opening as if to shout but he never got the chance.   
Instead the shuttle lurched again, and again and listed heavily to the side. All at once there was a series of explosions, a horrible crunch and then the shuttle was rolling.   
The next thing Val Ashaia knew was her brother’s shrill screams. He was clinging to her, but there were figures above him and they lifted him off her between them. Next, a figure that resolved itself into a large Duros was crouching in front of her. Val Ashaia tried to bat the reaching hands away, but between the size difference and without effective use of her broken hands it was useless. The unfamiliar woman who smelled of smoke and the ozone stink of blaster fire undid the seat’s restraints and hefted the child over her shoulder.  
Val Ashaia’s legs were pinned firmly against the duros’s chest and her arms dangled mostly uselessly down her back. The girl was carried easily out of the wreck and into the smoke-hazed day. They were still in the hangar. The shield guarding the exit was down and the burning remains of the valley and the crown city that had lain there sprawled like a dying animal. The air was choking. It stunk. Or the duros stunk. Or both. Val Ashaia’s head spun. She retched weakly. The duros growled a threat in a language the girl didn’t understand.  
Val Ashaia held very still after that. On the cracked paving of what once had been a bay stocked with pleasure-craft a group of ragged, dirtied and often bleeding outsiders had congregated. They spoke rapidly in the same, unfamiliar language. Carried backwards, Val Ashaia only caught glimpses of the others. She saw Tayvin a few times. They’d put him in binders, taken his belt with the toy lightsaber on it. A bruise darkened the side of his face. Meanwhile, Val Ashaia recognized only her father’s voice, speaking rapidly in the same guttural language. Often the crowd of strangers would yell over him, but they soon seemed to reach a decision. The group moved into the palace.   
They stopped and started often. Val Ashaia was to the back of the group and saw little but the floor. But she heard her father arguing, her brother’s occasional muted cry, a thud of hard objects on skin.   
It wasn’t until the flooring changed and they approached the throne room, where Val Ashaia had always been told she needed to go to in an emergency that she had more clear memories. She felt something deeply wrong first. Like an ache that tore through her from the inside out. The girl cried out through instinct alone and started struggling. The duros tossed her to the ground with a disgusted shout.   
Ahead Val Ashaia heard the familiar clashing of lightsabers, and screams. There were several voices. But one of them was certainly her mother. Val Ashaia was terrified. She felt that the worst had already happened in the core of her being. Not felt emotionally, felt and knew as a physical sensation. She was cold everywhere.  
Her father was at the head of the group and he was thrashing against the hold of two strangers who each had one of his arms. He was begging in Basic. “Don’t take the children in there,” he said, “please. Let them go. Please.”  
Their leader, a species Val Ashaia didn’t know, shot back something angry. A denial. In a heartbeat Val Ashaia’s father reared up and smashed his horned forehead into the leader’s face. Then he twisted and one of the men holding his arms fell away. The other, however, held on and managed to pull Val Ashaia’s father backwards, off balance. The duros surged forward. As the children’s father noticed the approaching woman and turned she was already raising the butt of her riffle. Val Ashaia’s father’s growl was cut short by a wet crunch as the stock struck home in the center of his face. The man dropped.   
Everything was still except for the sounds of fighting nearby. After a moment the duros crouched by her fallen leader. She stood up almost immediately with a disgusted sound. Gesturing toward the throne room, she kicked the other fallen man until he climbed stiffly to his feet. The duros returned to Val Ashaia and yanked her up by her hair. Then, still gesturing and speaking rapidly she stomped down the hall toward the fighting.  
Everything seemed dim and far away to the girl. There was a roaring somewhere far away inside or outside of her, but her immediate being felt numb. All she could do was watch.  
Tayvin was immediately behind her, eye swollen shut as a scale-faced pirate guided him with a rough hand on his neck. Behind them two pirates were dragging her limp father by his arms.   
The procession entered the hall before the throne room. There was a gathering there. The sounds of fighting were ever thicker, and yet it seemed the crowd was mostly still. Facing one direction. The duros dragged the girl toward them.   
She barked something, over and over, and then switched to extremely rough basic.  
“Move! Move! Commander Jiel! Where?” One or two heads turned and the duros took that opportunity to shove her way through the crowd. The press of bodies was smashing Val Ashaia to the floor, but the Duros held on and pulled Val Ashaia relentlessly behind her to the front of the crowd.   
Suddenly, they broke through but Val Ashaia immediately wished they hadn’t. She’d gasped in a breath only to find the air thick with heat and so foul she could taste cooked meat and waste. The duros tossed the girl away from her.  
“Commander Jiel!” The duros barked again.   
Val Ashaia looked around wildly. The way she’d come was an unfamiliar wall of bodies. Before her was the throne.  
On the dias were three people, moving as colored blurs of light and fire. One, lit in crackling magenta, Val Ashaia knew to be her mother. On either side of her were two strangers carrying lightsabers of blue. No one on Maris carried a blue saber.  
The duel was fierce and blinding. The figures moved back and forth with incredible rapidity. Then the smaller of the two strangers overextended himself. Shii Ashaia spun out of the way and her blade arced toward the stranger, a human boy. The other stranger, larger, not human, lunged in to parry Shii Ashaia’s blade. He saved the boy’s life but left himself open. Shii Ashaia snapped a force-augmented kick into the man’s ribs and he sailed away, into the wall. With that she whirled and laid a rapid barrage at the child. He fell within three strikes. Mouth gaping, soundless, he crumbled. Shii Ashaia’s lightsaber immediately collapsed as she spun to face her remaining opponent. Her blade reignited as she raised it above her head and sank into a ready stance. Her opponent stood slowly, maintaining eye contact with Shii Ashaia as he too brought his lightsaber up to a ready position.  
The tension was suddenly shattered by a rough voice.   
“Stop!” The voice roared in basic. “Stop! Or I kill the little girl!”   
A something hot, round and metallic touched the back of Val Ashaia’s head. She smelled her hair crisp. She smelled ozone.   
On the dais Shii Ashaia moved only her eyes. She locked eyes with her daughter. Shii Ashaia’s face crumpled in grief.  
“I mean it! Drop the lightsaber!”  
Shii Ashaia’s jaw locked. The light from the Queensblade went out. Then the woman drew herself out of her stance, to a normal standing pose. She was somehow, inexplicably diminished. She tossed the saber away, into the rubble.   
The queen raised her hands slowly and stepped forward, toward the crowd. The man behind Val Ashaia said nothing.   
Shii Ashaia took another step, and another. Then she sank to her knees on the second step of the dais. One hand she kept in the air. The other sank to a huddled form on the step below her, carded into white hair. Forith. He lay there, still. There was a bloom of red through the back of his blue tunic. Shii Ashaia’s hand trembled as she stroked her thumb over the line of her son’s face. All was still. Tears leaked from the silent queen’s face.  
The strange man with the blue saber approached Shii Ashaia from behind. He put a restraining hand on her shoulder. The hard pressure on the back of Val Ashaia’s head retreated.   
Then both the Queen’s and the strange warrior’s heads shot up at once, looking over the watching figures. Val Ashaia barely had time to see them move before a blaster shot cracked from behind the crowd, arcing to the dias. Shii Ashaia’s head snapped back at the neck. She fell.   
Val Ashaia lurched forward and strong arms immediately closed around the girl and lifted her off the ground. She fought but there was nothing she could do as her body was swung away, pushed back into the press of the crowd. She saw it over and over in her mind.   
The snap of her mother’s head at an impossible angle. Her hand flying free of Forith’s still form. The dark tendrils of her hair and the sharp sparkle of the gold and gems woven there. The way her body had sunk like a doll onto the dais.   
Right before it had happened, before her eyes had rolled back, she’d looked into her daughter’s eyes. She was trying to say something but Val Ashaia couldn’t hear her. All she could remember, all she could hear was her mother’s voice every night as she tucked Val Ashaia into bed. “I’ve built this palace just for you. To keep you safe. I will never let anything happen to you. I will never let you, or your brothers or your Papa go. I will never, ever let you go.”  
I will never, ever let you go. I will never let you, or your brothers or your papa go. Her hand flying free of Forith’s hair, her body falling away. Over and over and over. Shii Ashaia died over and over and over. Val Ashaia felt it again, like earlier, from the inside out. It tore her apart. She didn’t remember anything more from that moment until a long time after. Only an infinity of death. Her mother and her brother. Her mother letting go. Over and over. Echoing like screams in the cavernous halls of their home.


End file.
